Do Social Media Users Consent to the Use of Their Social Media Data in Research?——Ethical Reflection Based on User Acceptance Intention

Chen Yi; Li Si

doi:10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2021.15.014

2021 , Vol. 65 >Issue 15: 120 - 129

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2021.15.014

SPECIAL TOPIC: Meng Liansheng's Library and Information Academic Thought and Practice Innovation

Do Social Media Users Consent to the Use of Their Social Media Data in Research?——Ethical Reflection Based on User Acceptance Intention

Chen Yi ,
Li Si

Expand

1 School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072;
2 Department of information management, Peking University, Beijing 100871

Received date: 2020-12-22

Revised date: 2021-05-08

Online published: 2021-08-07

Fold

Abstract

[Purpose/significance] This study takes social media users as the research object, investigates their acceptance intention for their own social media data collected for research, explores the influence of familiarity, trust and altruism on acceptance intention, analyzes the necessity of informed consent procedure, and reminds scholars to conduct ethical reflection. It provides a reference for establishing ethical norms for social media data research and conducting ethical risk communication with users. [Method/process] The psychological mechanism model of users from informed to consent was established. A total of 320 valid questionnaires were collected from Sina Microblog by questionnaire survey method, and the model was verified. [Result/conclusion] This study verifies two effective psychological paths: familiarity-altruism-acceptance intention and familiarity-trust-altruism-acceptance intention. It is found that familiarity and altruism are important factors that affect user acceptance intention. Users have strong ethical needs, and informed consent procedure is necessary. Researchers can also actively express respect and recognition, and enhance users’ altruism and acceptance intention to avoid ethical risks in the research process.

Key words： ethics; social media data; informed consent; familiarity; altruistic; trust

Cite this article

Chen Yi , Li Si . Do Social Media Users Consent to the Use of Their Social Media Data in Research?——Ethical Reflection Based on User Acceptance Intention[J]. Library and Information Service, 2021 , 65(15) : 120 -129 . DOI: 10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2021.15.014

References

[1] JAMES N, BUSHER H. Ethical issues in online research[J]. Educational research & evaluation, 2015,21(2):89-94.
[2] GOEL V. As data overflows online, researchersgrapple with ethics[N]. The New York Times, 2014-08-12(1).
[3] KOENE A, PEREZ E, CARTER C J, et al. Research ethics and public trust, preconditions for continued growth of internet mediated research:public confidence in internet mediate research[C]//International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy. Piscataway:IEEE, 2016:163-168.
[4] NAAMAN M, BOASE J, LAI C H. Is it really about me? Message content in social awareness streams[C]//Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. New York:ACM, 2010.
[5] 常文英, 刘冰. 基于可信度分析的微博用户个人信息泄露实证研究——以新浪微博为例[J]. 情报杂志, 2015(8):169-176.
[6] CHWARTZ P M, SOLOVE D J. The pii problem:privacy and a new concept of personally identifiable information[J]. Social science electronic publishing, 2011,86(6):1814-1894.
[7] British Psychological Society[EB/OL].[2021-04-08]. https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/ethics-guidelines-internet-mediated-research-2017.
[8] DOUGLAS M D. Should internet researchers use Ill-Gotten information?[J]. Science & engineering ethics, 2018, 24:1221-1240.
[9] BAROCAS S, NISSENBAUM H. Big data's end run around anonymity and consent[M]//LANE J, STODDEN V, BENDER S, et al, Eds.Privacy, big data, and the public good:frameworks for engagement. Cambridge:Cambridge Univ ersity Press, 2014:44-75.
[10] FIESLER C, LAMPE C, BRUCKMAN A S. Reality and perception of copyright terms of service for online content creation[C]//Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW). New York:Association for Computing Machinery,2016:1450-1461.
[11] VACCARO K, KARAHALIOS K, SANDVING C, et al. Agree or cancel? Research and terms of service compliance[EB/OL].[2020-01-20]. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3773/15ac09cd7fba7f1f154b0b1481d7c24ad5eb.pdf?_ga=2.80698775.1012534936.1562862749-228839498.1562862749.
[12] BEAULIEU A, ESTAELLA A. Rethinking research ethics for mediated settings[J]. Information, communication & society, 2012, 15(1):23-42.
[13] ZIMMER M. "But the data is already public":on the ethics of research in facebook[J]. Ethics and information technology, 2010, 12(4):313-325.
[14] VITAK J, PROFERES N, SHILTON K, et al. Ethics regulation inh social computing research:examining the role of institutional review boards[J]. Journal of empirical research on human research ethics, 2017,12(5):372-382.
[15] ZIMMER M, PROFERES N J. A topology of Twitter research:disciplines, methods, and ethics[J]. Aslib journal of information management, 2014, 66(3):250-261.
[16] MCNEAL G S. Facebook manipulated user news feeds to create emotional responses[EB/OL].[2020-01-20]. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-user-news-feeds-to-create-emotional-contagion/#bca47b639dc7.
[17] OKCupid plays with love in user experiments[N]. The New York Times, 2014-07-29.
[18] WARRELL J G, JACOBSEN M. Internet research ethics and the policy gap for ethical practice in online research settings. Canadian journal of higher education, 2014, 44(1):22-37.
[19] AoIR ethics working committee. Ethical decision-making and internet research:recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee (Version 2.0)[EB/OL].[2020-11-20]. http://www.aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf.
[20] FIESLER C, PROFERES N. "Participant" perceptions of Twitter research ethics[J]. Social media society, 2018, 4(1):1-14.
[21] TAYLOR J, PAGLIARI C. Mining social media data:how are research sponsors and researchers addressing the ethical challenges?[J]. Research ethics, 2017, 14(2):1-39.
[22] BROWN B, WEILENMANN A, MCMILLAN D, et al. Five provocations for ethical HCI research[C]//Proceeding of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.New York:Association for Computing Machinery,2016:852-863.
[23] CLARK K, DUCKHAM M, GUILLEMIN M, et al. Advancing the ethical use of digital data in human research:challenges and strategies to promote ethical practice[J]. Ethics & information technology, 2019,21:59-73.
[24] ZIMMER M. Is it ethical to harvest public Twitter accounts without consent?[EB/OL].[2020-11-10].https://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/02/12/is-it-ethical-to-harvest-public-twitter-accounts-without-consent/.
[25] KRAMER A D I, GUILLORY J E, HANCOCK J T. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks[J]. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 2014, 111(24):8788-8790.
[26] NUNAN D, YENICIOGLU B. Informed, uninformed and participative consent in social media research[J]. International journal of market research, 2013, 55(6):791-808.
[27] CUSTERS B, SIMONE V D H, SCHERMER B, et al. Informed consent in social media use. The gap between user expectations and EU Personal Data Protection Law[J]. Social science electronic publishing, 2013, 10(4):435-457.
[28] WILLIAMS M L, BURNAP P, SLOAN L. Towards an ethical framework for publishing Twitter data in social research:taking into account users' views, online context and algorithmic estimation[J]. Sociology, 2017,51(6):1149-1168.
[29] PROFERES N. Information flow solipsism in an exploratory study of beliefs about Twitter. Social media + society[EB/OL].[2020-11-10]. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117698493.
[30] LITT E. Knock, Knock. Who's there? The imagined audience[J]. Journal of broadcasting & electronic media, 2012,56(3):330-345.
[31] LEE S S J. Studying "Friends":the ethics of usingsocial media as research platforms[J]. The American journal of bioethics, 2017,17(3):1-2.
[32] VANUSSA W, JAMES S ASHOK R, et al. Can visual familiarity influence attitudes towards brands? An exploratory study of advergame design and cross-cultural consumer behaviour[J]. Entertainment computing, 2018, 27:194-208.
[33] BRANDT D S. "Factors associated with young adults' reported intention of willingness to participate in clinical research"[EB/OL].[2020-04-08]. https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5604&context=etd.
[34] ZHANG X, LIU S, DENG Z, et al. Knowledge sharing motivations in online health communities:a comparative study of health professionals and normal users[J]. Computers in human behavior, 2017, 75(10):797-810.
[35] ACAR O A. Motivations and solution appropriateness in crowdsourcing challenges for innovation[J]. Research policy, 2018, 48(8):103716.
[36] AJZEN I. From intentions to actions:A theory of planned behavior[J]. Advances in experimental social psychology, 1987, 20(8):1-63.
[37] FISHBEIN M, AJZEN I. Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior:an introduction to theory and research[M]. Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley, 1975.
[38] ICEK A, DRIVER B L. Application of the theory of planned behavior to leisure choice[J]. Journal of leisure research[J], 1992, 24(3):207-224.
[39] OH S. The characteristics and motivations of health answerers for sharing information, knowledge, and experiences in online environments[J]. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2012, 63(3):543-557.
[40] MULLER C E. Examining the inter-relationships between procedural fairness, trust in actors, risk expectations, perceived benefits, and attitudes towards power grid expansion projects[J]. Energy policy, 2020,141:111465.
[41] SENGUPTA S, STRAUSS R P, DEVELLIS R, et al. Factors affecting African-American participation in AIDS research[J]. Jaids journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes, 2000, 24(3):275-284.
[42] RIEGELSBERGER J, SASSE M A, MCCARTHY J D. Trust at First Sight? A test of users' ability to identify trustworthy e-commerce sites[EB/OL].[2020-04-13]. http://sec.cs.ucl.ac.uk/fileadmin/sec/publications/Riegelsberger_Sasse_McCarthy_A_Test_of_Users_Ability_to_Identify_Trustworthy_E-commerce_Sites_HCI2003.pdf.
[43] OKYERE K E, NOR K M. Individual factors and knowledge sharing[J]. American journal of economics and business administration, 2011,3(1):66-72.
[44] GEFEN D. E-commerce:the role of familiarity and trust[J]. Omega, 2000,28(6):725-737.
[45] THORNTON T, LEAHY J. Trust in citizen science research:a case study of the groundwater education through water evaluation & testing program[J]. Jawra journal of the American Water Resources Association, 2012, 48(5):1032-1040.
[46] LUHMANN N. Trust and power[M], Chichester, UK:Wiley, 1979.
[47] YOON C, ROLLAND E. Knowledge-sharing in virtual communities:familiarity, anonymity and self-determination theory[J]. Behaviour & information technology, 2012, 31(11):1133-1143.
[48] BODE N W F, MILLER J, O'GORMAN R, et al. Increased costs reduce reciprocal helping behaviour of humans in a virtual evacuation experiment[EB/OL].[2020-05-13]. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15896#citeas.
[49] KHALIL E L. Adam Smith and three theories of altruism[J]. Louvain economic review, 2001, 67(4):421-435.
[50] KALCHEV D. The impact of positive emotions on altruism in the presence of familiarity[EB/OL].[2020-05-13]. https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/101633/GRADU-1498464800.pdf?sequence=1.
[51] 朱备. 个体信任水平对利他行为的影响研究[D].金华:浙江师范大学,2016.
[52] CHEN H, FAN H, TSAI C. The Role of community trust and altruism in knowledge sharing:an investigation of a virtual community of teacher professionals[J]. Educational technology & society, 2014,17(3):168-179.
[53] 耿瑞利,申静.不同文化视域下社交网络用户知识共享行为动机研究[J].中国图书馆学报,2019,45(1):60-81.
[54] 钱丽丽. 电子政务公众服务需求及其对系统成功的影响路径研究[D].上海:复旦大学, 2010.
[55] MOSTAFA M M. Altruistic, cognitive and attitudinal determinants of organ donation intention in Egypt:a social marketing perspective[J]. Health marketing quarterly, 2010, 27(1):97-115.
[56] WILES R, HEATH S, CROW G,et al. Informed consent in social research:a literature review[EB/OL].[2020-05-05]. http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/85/1/MethodsReviewPaperNCRM-001.pdf.
[57] SALMONS J. Getting to yes:informed consent in qualitative social media research[M]//WOODFIELD K, ed. The ethics of online research. Bingley:Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017:109-134.
[58] Twitter privacy policy[EB/OL].[2020-09-20].https://twitter.com/en/privacy.
[59] COTTONE R R, CLAUS R E. Ethical decision-making models:a review of the literature[J]. Journal of counseling & development, 2000,78(3):275-283. 作者贡献说明:陈一:确定选题,提出论文整体研究思路与框架,撰写论文; 李斯:数据分析与处理,修改论文。

Options

Outlines

模态框（Modal）标题

Abstract

Cite this article

References